Archive

Quotes

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC